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A fair maiden / Joyce Carol Oates.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.Description: 165 p. ; 22 cmISBN:
  • 9780151015160
  • 0151015163 :
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 813/.54 22
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Katya Spiva is walking with her two summer babysitting charges in Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey, when she's approached by silver-haired, gentlemanly Marcus Kidder, a local resident of some renown. What does this mysterious rich man really want from Katya, who is young enough to be his granddaughter? And what will he risk to get it?
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Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Fiction Adult Fiction FIC OAT Available 36748001910431
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books he's written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her -- Mr. Kidder's life couldn't be more different from Katya's drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder's new painting isn't the lighthearted endeavor it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it?In the tradition of Oates's classic story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" A Fair Maiden is an unsettling, ambiguous tale of desire and control.

Sixteen-year-old Katya Spiva is walking with her two summer babysitting charges in Bayhead Harbor, New Jersey, when she's approached by silver-haired, gentlemanly Marcus Kidder, a local resident of some renown. What does this mysterious rich man really want from Katya, who is young enough to be his granddaughter? And what will he risk to get it?

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

A summer nanny in an upscale New Jersey Shore community, 15-year-old Katya Spivak is approached by wealthy 68-year-old author and artist Marcus Kidder-and one immediately wonders where this is leading. Oates (Dear Husband) creates a growing sense of evil as Katya becomes more involved with Kidder. First she visits him innocently enough with her charges for tea, then comes over alone when she needs money to help her mother out of a jam; finally, after one unreasonable demand, she rebels. In exploring Katya's life and relations, including her gambling, man-chasing mother, jealous sisters, and criminal boyfriend Ray, Oates shows makes it clear why a wealthy, sophisticated man would become irresistible to Katya. The answer to the question whether Kidder's intentions are good or evil and whether Katya will eventually be saved or ruined lead to the climax of this short but satisfying novel.-Josh Cohen Mid-Hudson Lib. Syst., Poughkeepsie, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak and elderly Marcus Kidder share a bizarre romance in Oates's derivative and unpolished new novel. In bland Bayhead Harbor, N.J., Katya serves as a nanny to the Engelhardts' two young children. Attractive Katya-unappreciated by her alcoholic mother, mistreated by the tyrannical Engelhardts-is intrigued by the attentions of wealthy Mr. Kidder, a former children's book author and amateur painter. The courting is slow at first, but after Katya accepts Mr. Kidder's money to help her mother pay off a debt, things accelerate. Soon Katya is posing for Mr. Kidder in lingerie and receiving payment upon each visit. She begins to feel used, but is thankful for the attention-until one evening when Mr. Kidder possibly drugs her, at which point something equally bizarre and predictable happens. Katya and Mr. Kidder's final meeting reveals Mr. Kidder's true intention for Katya, but the revelation isn't worth the buildup. This is certainly one of Oates's lesser works. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Sixteen-year-old Katya is spending the summer working as a nanny in a wealthy Jersey Shore community when she meets Marcus Kidder, an elderly yet dashing artist to whom libraries and pavilions are dedicated all over town. He catches her eyeing display-case lingerie and offers to buy it for her; she refuses. Later, when she visits his mansion, he tries to gift her the same lingerie; again, she refuses. But despite each rebuff, she keeps returning to  Kidder and soon is posing for his paintings, some of which require the shedding of clothes. What sounds like a story of older-man-seduces-waif becomes, in Oates' hands, something far thornier a treatise on the faceted push-and-pull of female aspiration. There is a subtle mystery at the center of this unsettling short novel: Kidder insists that he has a mission for Katya that will be revealed in time. The mission, when it comes, is a dark one, involving not just transactions of subservience and control but of life and death, and readers' takes on character motivations will govern their reactions. Fans of Oates' gothic stylings will not be disappointed, however, and Katya's belligerent exuberance ( He wants me! Me, me! ) gives the prose plenty of punch.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2009 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A patient act of seduction has curiously appropriate mythic resonance in this brisk novella. It's a "fairy tale," explicitly linked to the anonymous "Ballad of Barbara Allen" (excerpts from which are quoted in the text) about a cruel young beauty and the boy who died for love of her. But Oates (Wild Nights!, 2008, etc.) considerably alters those details in the story of 16-year-old Katya Spivak's summer of employment as nanny to the young children of a wealthy couple who vacation in the posh New Jersey seaside town of Bayhead Harbor. This haven lies far from Vineland, the grimy inland hamlet where Katya's broken and wasted family members are "scattered like sea creatures washed ashore in the wake of a terrible storm." Marcus Kidder, an elegant, handsome older man, approaches Katya and politely courts her, gradually emphasizing his intuition that they are "soul mates." She finds herself dreamily visiting his lavish home, first rejecting then luxuriating in his attentions, gradually edging away from the worlds she knows and fears to enter Mr. Kidder's artfully woven web. This being Oates, there's a considerable amount of melodrama and violence, mostly initiated by Katya's drunken slut of a mother, and her thuggish cousin Roy. But this brief tale, oddly reminiscent here and there of Edith Wharton's classic short novel Summer, is expertly paced and suffused, not only with the usual hasty and lax prose, but also with sharp suggestive images: e.g., Kidder's limousine, always waiting for Katya, slinks along "silent and smooth-gliding as an undersea predator." Furthermore, the sinister, charming, "artistic" Mr. Kidder, a king of sorts among men, emerges quite convincingly as both more and less than he appears to be. Oates at her most restrained and hence best. This one almost makes up for the ludicrous overkill of My Sister, My Love (2008). Almost. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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